'I like meatballs', the true talisman of Italy

The chemistry behind a winning group always has something unique and difficult to understand from the outside. In the case of the European champion Azzurra, the secret is in these phrases: “But what a diet! I like meatballs and milanesa, I ate at four o'clock, I'm already hungry and it's seven o'clock “. While the English sang “It's coming home”, the Italians chanted that at all hours. It seems crazy, but it is so.

It is a practically unknown Neapolitan song before the Euro, performed by ‘Luca il Sole di Notte’, a fishmonger with a passion for music. His store is called ‘Fishmongering of the artists’ and it is clear why.

It was the partenopeo Lorenzo Insigne, with the complicity of Donnarumma and Immobile, who brought the song to the dressing room of the Nazionale, which was not very successful at first. The Lombard Matteo Pessina revealed in ‘Sogno Azzurro’ that he wondered with Locatelli “where they ended up”, But little by little that hymn to food conquered them all.

The first time the azzurri sang it in public it was after the win with Wales, at the end of the group stage. From there ‘Ma quale diet’ appeared more and more on the players' social networks, than after knocking down Belgium they unleashed on the plane chanting it with an unstoppable Pessina, just him. “Now Locatelli and I are the first who want to hear it,” said the Atalanta man, “it is our ritual, it is already part of us. It started as a hesitation and now when we put it on we almost broke the windows of the bus, poor driver! “.

They had to surrender also Roberto Mancini (“They play it all the time, it's impossible not to learn about meatballs and milanesa”) and Giorgio Chiellini. To the Juve captain, who appeared singing in a perfect Neapolitan, He had no other choice: “We have a group of ultras-djs and our playlist is already all Neapolitan, I had to learn the chorus to participate. I don't even know who the singer is”, He confessed. It is one more detail about the group that Mancini built, one of the most united in the history of the Nazionale, beyond the colors and the proper names. Considering how superstitious Italians are and that the World Cup will be played in just a year and a halfIt is easy to imagine the next step: ‘Ma quale diet’ will also conquer Qatar.